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Could Cardinals Reward Prized Catching Prospect with MLB Promotion Soon?
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- Could Cardinals Reward Prized Catching Prospect with MLB Promotion Soon?
Roundtable Sports' John Denton makes a case for the big-league promotion of Triple-A catcher Leonardo Bernal, who is thriving at Triple-A Memphis.
When Jimmy Crooks opened the Triple-A season by mashing 13homers and four doubles and posting an OPS of .979 over his first 39 games, the Cardinals felt obligated to reward the catching prospect's success at Memphiswith a big-league promotion.
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With that in mind, what should the club do with 22-year-oldcatcher Leo Bernal, who had another four-hit night on Tuesday and has capped asolid first season at Triple-A with a flurry of success of late?
Bernal, the No. 6-ranked prospect in the Cardinals ' MinorLeague system, has shown the promise the Cards felt he had when they originallysigned him as an international free agent out of Panama in 2021 for $680,000.In 83 games with Memphis, Bernal has slashed .289/.373/.497/.870 with 18doubles, two triples, 14 homers and 66 RBI. Bernal has struck out at a 22.4percent clip, but he's also walked 13.6 percent of the time, and he's even stolenseven bases.
Bernal's best baseball has come of late as he's hit .380with seven doubles, six home runs and 26 RBI in his last 19 games for Memphis.
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Cardinals Promote Two Prospects, Assign Three Newcomers to Loaded Double-A Roster
Cards not getting much out of catching corps
Bernal's torrid stretch comes at a time when the Cardinals'offense has struggled to score runs and they have gotten little production fromtheir catching corps of Pedro Pages , Ivan Herrera and Crooks. For the season,Cardinals' catchers rank 28th in MLB in RBI (35), 21st inhomers (10), 19th in batting average (.228) and 18th inOPS (.669).
After rallying back to a 13-7 win over the Yankees on Monday night, the Cardinals mustered little offense at all in a 2-0 loss to New York on Tuesday. It was the 16th time in the past 27 games that the Cards have generated three or fewer runs of offense.
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Crooks, 25, hit a long home run in Monday's stirring eighthinning rally past the Yankees, but he has struggled with far too much swing andmiss since his promotion to St. Louis . In 37 games, Crooks has hit just .174with a .592 OPS with four homers, three doubles and 11 RBI. In addition to analarming 33.3 percent strikeout rate, Crooks has not thrown out a base stealerin nine tries this season or in 15 tries in his 52 MLB games dating back to2025.
Pages, who was replaced by Crooks as the Cardinals soughtmore offense from the catching position, is the club's best option atcontrolling the running game, but he offers little punch at the plate. Pages hasthrown out 14 of 41 base stealers this season and his 34 percent success rateis much better than the MLB average of 29 percent. However, he has hit just.206 with a .574 OPS, four homers and 11 RBI in 64 games.
Herrera, the centerpiece of the offense during thesurprising early months of the season, has seen his struggles at the platecoincide with the Cardinals' dropoff offensively. Herrera, an All-Star for thefirst time in his career, seemed to wear down physically and get too pull happyin June (.218, three homers), July (.222, two homers) and so far in August (2for 15, .133, zero homers). Also, there's this: While Herrea doesn't have athrowing error or a passed ball in 42 games behind the plate this season, he is0 for 24 in throwing out runners in 2026 after going 0 for 10 in 2025. The lasttime he threw out a base stealer was when the Cardinals were last at YankeeStadium – and superstar Juan Soto was still a Yankee – in 2024.
As for Bernal, he has a wRC+ of 141 and a .948 OPS over hislast 60 games at the plate and he's also thrown out 31.4 percent of basestealers this season at Triple-A. That comes a year after he won the Double-AGold Glove award and helped Springfield to a Texas League crown. If Bernal ispromoted in the coming days or weeks, the Cardinals would need to keep his activeroster service time to fewer than 45 days and 130 at bats to preserve hisrookie status for 2027.
